Mueller’s Office Sought to Keep Comey Memos Secret

WASHINGTON — The special counsel’s office sought to keep secret the memos written by the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, in an attempt to stop those under investigation — like President Trump — from tailoring their stories to line up with Mr. Comey’s accounts, according to a court transcript made public Tuesday.

Lawyers for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, made their arguments in a closed-door hearing in January 2018 before a federal judge, who was overseeing a lawsuit to have memos Mr. Comey wrote about his interactions with the president released to the public. News organizations had sued the Justice Department over access to the memos, but the case became moot when Congress made them public three months later. The judge ordered a transcript of the hearing released on Tuesday.

The transcript provides a window into the status of the special counsel’s investigation eight months after Mr. Mueller began examining whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice, among other issues. At the hearing, one of Mr. Mueller’s top lawyers, Michael Dreeben, tried to illustrate the severity of the investigation, the questions over the president’s conduct and the potential benefits for witnesses who had read Mr. Comey’s memos.

“An individual who is seeking to shape or mold his own statements around those of others thereby acquires an advantage in doing so that he would not otherwise have,” Mr. Dreeben said, according to the transcript.

Mr. Dreeben acknowledged to the judge, James E. Boasberg of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, that Mr. Trump was being investigated for obstructing justice and that the F.B.I. had opened that inquiry before Mr. Mueller’s appointment in May 2017.

“That investigation entailed matters that were covered in the Comey memoranda, which explored and recorded Mr. Comey’s recollections of meetings, including one-on-one meetings with the president of the United States,” Mr. Dreeben said, referring to the initial F.B.I. inquiry. “In those meetings, events occurred that led the F.B.I. to conclude that an investigation was appropriate under its authority to consider matters such as obstruction of justice.”

Mr. Dreeben added, “In this instance, a person whose conduct is within the scope of the investigation is the president of the United States.”

The next month, Mr. Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee about his interactions with the president. Mr. Dreeben said that although many parts of the memos had been previously revealed, it was still important to keep them away from those whose conduct was being scrutinized.

“Those memoranda are also far more detailed in many instances than the matters that Mr. Comey revealed either in his statement for the record or in his oral testimony before the Senate,” Mr. Dreeben said.

He said that because Mr. Comey’s memos were written contemporaneously, witnesses would want their accounts to line up with the memos.

During an investigation, evidence like Mr. Comey’s memos “are typically held in confidence through the course of the investigation and any ensuing proceedings to ensure that all witnesses provide truthful evidence based on their own recollections and not on any inadvertent or advertent tailoring or influence from other witness statements.”

Mr. Mueller’s office ultimately lost the battle — but not in the courtroom. In April 2018, the Justice Department provided copies to members of Congress, which immediately released them to the public.

A year after the memos became public, Mr. Mueller finished his investigation and declined to decide whether the president obstructed justice. The attorney general, William P. Barr, cleared the president of wrongdoing. But in his report, Mr. Mueller detailed more than a dozen episodes that legal experts believe show how Mr. Trump sought to interfere with the investigation. Among them were several of the encounters Mr. Comey detailed in his memos.